We’ve mentioned Aptara a lot on these pages, and now one of their Solutions Architects (I wonder what that is!), Eric Freese, has gotten an iPad and posted his impressions. This part of the post interested me:
My most disappointing iPad experience occurred with perhaps its most highly anticipated feature – a component of its enhanced eBook capability. When I clicked on a web link in my eBook, a message popped up asking me if I “want to leave iBooks and open this link?” Well no, I didn’t, but apparently I didn’t have a choice.
When I clicked the link (to another eBook file) the browser then asked me if I would like to open the file—IN STANZA!!!
Because the iBook app depends on iTunes to manage its content, simple access to other eBooks is not feasible. This clumsy and unexpected user interface is possibly a significant downfall in the iPad’s support for interactivity. Web links are frequently mentioned as a class of enhancements; having to acknowledge leaving a book every time a link is selected gets tiresome fast.
I would think that a hyperlink inside of an ebook, especially one that links to an entire other freely available ebook, is the exception rather than the rule.
In fact I would be surprised if those using ebook readers of any stripe would even see a hyperlink at all until they have 100s of books. I have over sixty ebooks, the most I have seen is hyperlinks within a text such as footnotes.
Not to say that it is not common, especially for the vertical market of professional texts and journals.
Multitasking has its uses.